What Is Interoperability?
At its core, interoperability is the ability of different systems, organizations, and nations to work together coherently, effectively, and efficiently. Within NATO, it encompasses far more than simply plugging in the same equipment or using compatible software. It means aligning doctrine, training, procedures, and culture across thirty-two diverse member nations — and trusted partners — to ensure collective military effectiveness.
Interoperability effectiveness depends on alignment in three core areas:
- Technical interoperability: Can systems and networks exchange data in real time?
- Procedural interoperability: Are tactics, techniques, and procedures aligned?
- Human interoperability: Do people speak a common language of operations, trust each other, and train together?
Consider a joint operation involving a Norwegian radar system, a German air defence unit, and a Dutch command post. Without interoperability, those components cannot function as a cohesive whole. But when interoperability is achieved, these capabilities multiply each other’s effect, producing faster decisions, better outcomes, and fewer risks.
Why Does Interoperability Matter to NATO?
For NATO, interoperability is not a convenience. It is a strategic necessity.
The Alliance’s greatest strength lies in its ability to act as a unified force — politically and militarily — despite its national diversity. But unity without interoperability is hollow. NATO missions depend on forces from multiple nations working together on short notice, often under intense operational pressure. Whether delivering air policing, deterrence along the eastern flank, or cyber defence, success hinges on the seamless integration of Allied capabilities.
In today’s security environment, which spans five operational domains (land, air, maritime, space, and cyberspace), interoperability underpins everything from logistics planning to real-time targeting. Without it, a multinational force cannot share data, synchronize actions, or adapt quickly. In practical terms, interoperability saves lives, prevents mission failure, and strengthens deterrence.
How Is NATO Delivering Interoperability Today?
Interoperability is not something you declare. It is something you test, verify, and continuously refine.
That is why NATO invests heavily in exercises like the Coalition Warrior Interoperability eXploration, eXperimentation, eXamination eXercise, or CWIX — held annually at the Joint Force Training Centre in Bydgoszcz, Poland. Executed by Allied Command Transformation, CWIX brings together more than 2,700 operators, engineers, and specialists from over 40 Allies and partner nations.
For three weeks, participants stress-test more than 600 digital systems and Command-and-Control capabilities across 18 focus areas. These range from battlefield communications systems with multi-domain situational awareness, to medical logistics like patient tracking software.
The goal is to de-risk capabilities before they are needed in the field. Nations engage in collaborative “try-fail-fix” cycles to ensure their technologies are aligned with NATO’s evolving interoperability standards. These standards, developed under initiatives like Federated Mission Networking, provide a common baseline for how Allied systems must operate together from day one of a mission.
CWIX also integrates real-world operational lessons. The war in Ukraine has provided sobering evidence of the importance of rapid information sharing, secure networks, and cross-domain coordination. Ukraine’s battle-tested systems — such as the DELTA command platform — are now part of CWIX testing environments, helping NATO adapt and prepare.
The Interoperability Continuum
The Interoperability Continuum enables federated interoperability by linking three major HQ SACT interoperability events; the Coalition Warrior Interoperability Exercise (CWIX), The Think-Tank for Information Decision and Execution (TIDE) Sprint, and the TIDE Hackathon. Its purpose is to ensure that NATO’s Command-and-Control capabilities can exchange operational information in the right format, to the right person at the right time so that NATO commanders and decision makers have the situational awareness needed to make good decisions, quickly.
What Role Does Allied Command Transformation Play?
Allied Command Transformation, based in Norfolk, United States, is NATO’s strategic warfare development command. Its mission: to anticipate change, harness innovation, and ensure NATO remains ready, resilient, and united.
Interoperability is one of the Command’s core mandates. As the lead for CWIX and the champion of Federate Mission Networking, Allied Command Transformation ensures interoperability is not an afterthought but a foundational design principle for all NATO operations and capabilities. Allied Command Transformation performs this role in several ways:
- Standards and Policy: the Command coordinates the development of interoperability specifications that nations use to align their capabilities.
- Experimentation and Validation: Through CWIX and other venues, Allied Command Transformation validates that national systems are not just compliant — but effective when integrated.
- Partnership Engagement: the Command works with industry, academia, and partner nations to ensure that emerging technologies — including Artificial Intelligence and space-based assets — are interoperable from inception.
- Education and Training: the Command fosters interoperability in human terms by promoting shared doctrine, common operational language, and multi-national training environments.
Without Allied Command Transformation, NATO would lack a centralized, forward-looking engine to harmonize how interoperability is defined, delivered, and advanced across the Alliance.
What Does the Future of NATO Interoperability Look Like?
NATO’s ambitions are growing. The NATO 2030 agenda calls for a digitally enabled, multi-domain Alliance prepared to operate in a contested information environment. That vision hinges on interoperability by design, embedded into every capability from the moment it is conceived.
Allied Command Transformation is leading this charge. The 2025 edition of CWIX introduces a new “Innovation Sandbox” — a dedicated environment where experimental systems, often supported by NATO’s DIANA accelerator, can be tested for real-world compatibility.
This proactive approach is essential. Retrofitting interoperability is costly, slow, and often impossible. By contrast, designing it from the start — technically, procedurally, and culturally — ensures NATO can respond to tomorrow’s crises with confidence and cohesion.
The Final Takeaway
Interoperability is the hidden architecture that holds NATO’s military power together. It is indispensable. Through CWIX, Federated Mission Networking, and future-focused initiatives, NATO’s 32 nations can act not as separate entities, but as one united force.
That unity is what gives NATO its edge. And it is why interoperability remains one of the most important investments that can be made.
CWIX – is the biggest interoperability event of its kind in NATO. It is where Alliance and partner nations make sure that their command and control capabilities de-risk interoperability as an essential first-step toward NATO missions such as the Allied Response Force, or ARF. At the same time, CWIX is a testbed for interoperability specifications that are hard-wired into experimental and near-fielded capabilities, ready for future NATO missions.
CWIX – Enabling NATO’s Digital Interoperability
Federated interoperability is a key part of every capability and has a force multiplying effect in terms of operational effectiveness and cost efficiency.
CWIX is NATO’s premier interoperability event, operationally driven and technically supported, that meets a broad spectrum of interoperability validation and verification requirements. The Command & Control (C2) capabilities present at CWIX span the complete Communications and Information Systems (CIS) spectrum and represent the current, near-term, future and experimental capabilities of NATO and its Partner Nations. CWIX puts an emphasis on systems that will deploy with NATO-led operations, particularly those related to Federated Mission Networking (FMN) as a major component of the Allied Response Force (ARF).
At the highest levels, NATO recognises that interoperability enhances information sharing between NATO and partner nations and that interoperability is the key enabler that improves situational awareness, so we can make better decisions faster. Not only does this increase the likelihood of success, but it also serves the men and women of our militaries by reducing operational risk and keeping them safe.
CWIX allows nations to experiment, test and de-risk their deployable systems before undertaking missions such as the NATO Response Force. It allows commanders to ‘fine-tune’ their Command and Control capabilities before achieving combat readiness at the Steadfast Cobalt and Trident Juncture exercises. Nations also test and improve cyber awareness and confirm ‘day zero’ readiness of deployable Command and Control capabilities.
CWIX addresses a wide spectrum of technical and procedural interoperability between currently deployed, near-term, future and experimental capabilities. Interoperability testing before and during development reduces deployment times and cost, minimizes system failure in NATO missions and allows nations to design interoperability into their systems. At the same time, CWIX fosters innovation by identifying and solving interoperability shortfalls, experimenting with alternative approaches, and exploring emerging technologies. Altogether, CWIX helps maintain the military advantage of NATO and national troops in an increasingly complex and uncertain global security environment.
CWIX culminates in an annual execution event, primarily at the Joint Force Training Centre (JFTC) in Bydgoszcz, Poland but with participants also testing from national locations across the classified Combined Federated Battle-Lab (CFBL) Network and purpose-built unclassified networks. CWIX provides NATO, member and partner nations and other organizations with a controlled environment to test, identify and fix their interoperability issues to continuously improve NATO interoperability and resilience in future crisis.
For further information about CWIX, please contact the CWIX Management Team: [email protected]
TIDE Sprint – brings together operators, engineers, scientists and managers from governments, military, academia and industry to collaborate and contribute to future concepts, requirements and interoperability specifications. TIDE Sprint allows NATO’s communities of interest to jump-start new ideas and connect with experts to accelerate the development of interoperable capabilities.
NATO defines interoperability as “The ability to act together coherently, effectively and efficiently to achieve Allied objectives”. It is the foundation of all NATO operations and a cornerstone of the Alliance.
The Technology for Information, Decision, and Execution Superiority (TIDE) Sprint is an annual think-tank event that drives capability development to advance federated interoperability between NATO and Partner Nations’ Command & Control capabilities and IT services.
As a critical event in Allied Command Transformation’s Interoperability Continuum, which also includes the TIDE Hackathon, the Coalition Warrior Interoperability Exercise (CWIX), and Interoperability 360, TIDE Sprint is a week of collaboration, ideation, and innovation to generate ideas, develop concepts and specifications and support programs of work.
Each TIDE Sprint event provides a range of functional ‘tracks,’ led by experienced Subject Matter Experts and supported by a NATO Community of Interest (CoI).
Operators, engineers, scientists and technicians from nations’ governments, military, academia and industry come together to advance in one week what would otherwise take many months to achieve. The outcomes and recommendations from TIDE Sprint events shape NATO capability development efforts and programmes of work.
TIDE Sprint events are open to NATO, partner nations and Non-NATO entities (NNEs). They take place in an unclassified environment and all sessions are conducted in English. Additional information on event administration, registration, past presentations and reports is available on the password protected TIDEPEDIA website.
For access to Tidepedia, please email [email protected], and include your first and last name, email address and the government or military organisation you represent. Industry and academia are encouraged to participate but require sponsorship from NATO, or from a national government or military representative.
TIDE Hackathon – is a ‘deep-dive’ into difficult interoperability problems to see if new or emerging technologies will provide the solution. We bring teams of enthusiastic IT and software experts into a competitive environment for a 1-week period of intense ‘hacking’. What they achieve over such a short time is surprising, with rapid demonstrations of novel technologies to help understand technology, identify future requirements, or even develop software solutions!
In response to the dynamically changing geopolitical environment we face today, NATO conducts a process of continuous transformation guided by a high-level political agenda. Bringing effective change to such a large organization is, however, a complex endeavour. It involves many actors and typically a lengthy procurement process. This significantly hampers innovation, especially in the area of Information and Communications Technology where rapid, agile methods have proven to be much more effective.
Allied Command Transformation, as NATO’s Warfare Development Command, has developed the TIDE Hackathon to innovate and to promote the idea of federating “Interoperability by Design” between the NATO Alliance, its Partner Nations and Non-NATO Entities. TIDE Hackathons address future needs by applying a proven hackathon format to engage diverse groups of experts in a competitive and highly intensive work environment, over a limited period to focus on specific challenges related to interoperability and to develop innovative solutions that provide a deeper understanding of the impact that emerging and disruptive technologies have on federated interoperability. TIDE Hackathons also provide an opportunity for small teams to demonstrate and improve their skill, and to learn more about the challenges facing NATO.
The TIDE Hackathon is embedded into Allied Command Transformation’s Interoperability Continuum, a series of related and connected events (that include the bi-annual TIDE Sprint and the annual CWIX Exercise), that allow the NATO Alliance, Partner Nations and other Organizations to continually develop and improve federated interoperability between deployable command and control capabilities. Teams consisting of 2 to 4 experts from NATO and partner nations’ government, industry or academic organizations are welcome to apply. Teams are expected to work competitively, but in the spirit of collaboration.
The overarching theme of all TIDE Hackathons is to “demonstrate how EDTs can improve multi-domain interoperability between command and control systems within a federation”. TIDE Hackathon Challenges are defined in late October (after the Fall TIDE Sprint), and we ask teams to register from November onwards. We will then work with them so they are fully prepared for the TIDE Hackathon competition in late February.
The TIDE Hackathon is open to NATO, partner nations and other organisations; events take place in an unclassified environment and all sessions are conducted in English. Additional information on the challenges, event administration, registration, past presentations and reports are available on the password protected TIDEPEDIA website. For access to Tidepedia, please send an email to [email protected], including your first and last name, your telephone number, email address and the government or military organisation you represent. Industry and academia are encouraged to participate but require sponsorship from NATO, or from a national government or military representative.